EXCLUSIVE: Renowned Expert Agrees to 'Riverside Challenge' to Attempt Hack of Sequoia Voting System!

[BradBlog]

EXCLUSIVE: Renowned Computer Security Expert Agrees to Meet California County Supervisor's '1000 to 1' Challenge to 'Manipulate' Sequoia Voting Machine!

Harri Hursti --- The Lead Programmer Who Hacked Diebold Systems in Both Florida and Utah --- Looking Forward to Testing the Security Vulnerability of Riverside County's Systems!

Election Integrity Individuals, Group, Stake $1000 for Charity on Supervisor Jeff Stone's Offer!

An expert computer security programmer who successfully manipulated the results of a mock election held on a Diebold optical-scan voting machine in Florida as well as finding major security vulnerabilities on a Diebold touch-screen system in Utah has agreed to meet a public challenge to "manipulate" a Sequoia voting system in Riverside County, California.

Finnish computer security expert, Harris Hursti, who, along with Dr. Herbert H. Thompson
of Security Innovation, accomplished the landmark Diebold voting machine manipulations, has agreed to meet the open challenge put forward by Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone during a video-taped public board meeting.

Several national Election Integrity individuals, along with the non-partisan watchdog organization VelvetRevolution.us have agreed to stake $1000 to meet Stone's "thousand to one" bet that the county's voting machines, made by Sequoia Voting Systems, can indeed be manipulated....

COMPLETE EXCLUSIVE STORY:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3908

---
Brad Friedman
THE BRAD BLOG - The uprising continues...
http://www.BradBlog.com
VELVET REVOLUTION's Election Protection Strike Force!
Of the people, by the people, for the people...
http://www.VelvetRevolution.us/ElectionStrikeForce

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

1. $1,000 Says He Doesn't Pay Up After He Is Proven Wrong

Have you met a repub yet that admitted they were wrong, without placing blame somewhere else?

Where's Tony Soprano when you need him?

[Casablanca]

4. Fortunately, in this case, the money is the least of it.

It doesn't matter if they admit it, it only matters that they've provided yet another media opportunity where it will be proven that there is no electronic election system that can't be hacked.

Let them try to do all they can to make the machines non-hackable - it'll only be more devastating for them when they fail.

[BrotherBuzz]

2. My Pappy always said...

"A coward dies a thousand deaths, a hero dies but one." A thousand to one is pretty good odds.

I anxiously await the outcome.

[BradBlog]

3. Not to 'me too' ya, but...

Me too :-)

[hunter]

5. Oh goody! A circus!

Will there be elephants too?

:popcorn:

[BradBlog]

6. There would be...

...If I had anything to say about it! :-)

[hunter]

11. No doubt.

But it's not hacking when a machine is simply programmed to steal elections. That's the problem, and it has nothing to do with hacking. General purpose computing machines such as these can be programmed to do anything the programmer wants them to do, including accepting instruction from people we might not trust to count our votes.

Circus shows like this distract from the basic issue -- that it is the officials we've put our trust in to count our votes who are the real danger, not some nebulous undefined "hackers." With paper ballots their are fewer opportunities for elections to be dishonest. It is much easier to cheat with memory cards and rolls of paper than it is to cheat with big bulky boxes of hand marked ballots.

County politics in many places is rotten, and they don't need "hackers" to steal elections. They just need a few people who know how to steal elections. In many cases these machines are simply another tool for stealing elections, a tool much tidier than hand marked paper ballots and ballot boxes allow for, especially in the case of DRE machines where there are no ballots, just invisible electronic bits, whatever the hell those are.

Personally I think these machines are increasingly seen as an irritation to all but the very small subsets of voters who benefit from the electronic interface. At my own precinct the attitude of people waiting in line to use these machines was almost hostile as they watched streams of people passing them by to drop their absentee ballots into ballot boxes. I think most people basically hate computers, and they would rather not use them whenever much easier to understand alternatives exist.

[Peace Patriot]

12. "distract from the basic issue"--corrupt officials, not "hackers." ???

I know what you're saying, but I don't think it distracts. Anything that shows the vulnerabilities of these machines, and can get publicity for that, is good. It gets people to thinking and asking questions.

Even if Hursti fails whatever test it is, it's an occasion to point out the system's weakness. And Hursti is no fool. He won't fall for a falsely framed test, and he won't let them off the hook in his public statements regarding every other way the system is weak and insecure.

But I want to say I agree with your main point. The chief reason we have these crapass, insider hackable, Republican voting machines is corrupt election officials and legislators. Tom Delay and Bob Ney, the crooks who engineered the "Help America Vote For War Act" (abetted by corporate Democrat Christopher Dodd), knew what $3.9 billion in e-voting contracts and lavish lobbying would do to our election system.

And I agree with your other point as well: "...it's not hacking when a machine is simply programmed to steal elections."

So true!

I use the phrase "insider hackable." The machines are not just hackable. They are extremely insecure, unreliable and INSIDER HACKABLE.

When you combine the facts about these machines, and who makes them and controls their programming code, and who pushed them, and how they got fast-tracked all over the country with no handcount test, you almost have to laugh at the mind-boggling STUPIDITY that corruption creates.

Extremely insider hackable machines, run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations (Diebold-major donor to Bush-Cheney, CEO a Bush-Cheney campaign chair; ES&S - initially funded by extreme rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson), rammed through the Anthrax Congress by two Bushite Republican leaders who were later convicted of bribery and corruption and driven from office. The American people needed to have an illegal, unjust, heinous war, and a $10 trillion deficit, shoved down their throats. This is how the Bushites did it. And the silent Democrats--fists open for the HAVA billions--are no better.

We ought to be running these election officials out of town on a rail.

NOTE: VENEZUELA HAND-COUNTS **FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT** OF THE VOTE BECAUSE NOBODY THERE TRUSTS THE ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES. Smart people, Venezuelans.

[hunter]

14. Harri Hursti is a circus act.

I think we are so far past the question of "can these machines be hacked?" that presenting it from this angle only invites less informed people to imagine some sort of secure electronic system might be possible, or at the other extreme, demand such things as 100% hand counted ballots.

Confused election officials (and God knows there are many of them!) who haven't yet recovered from the disastrous phase out of old systems will throw up their hands in terror at the mention of hand counts and will run right into the waiting arms of electronic voting machine vendors.

You have to look at vote counting as a process, and look for the weak points in that process. The fact that these machines can be hacked by Harri Hursti is just one of many weak points in this process, and in my opinion it is not the most important one. Harri Hursti sorts of hacks can be readily dismissed in the minds of election officials who might think "Well, okay, I'll keep hackers away from my machines" even though that idea is nonsense.

It is much more difficult to dismiss the protection of a very secure and statistically solid audit.

[kster]

17. This guy wants PBHC

"I am no Luddite, afraid of technology. I know of which I speak. I am by all accounts, a computer security expert. I am, by trade, what is known as a "White Hat" Hacker or "penetration tester". Fortune 500 companies across the country pay me to break into their systems to show them their weaknesses, so that we can then make their systems stronger and more secure. I am good at it. I love doing it. I play with computers 8-10 hours per day at work and then come home and fire one up, often until the wee hours of the morning. I have a 4-post server rack in my house. I have a homebuilt intrusion detection system running on my Linux wireless router. At last count, I own no less than 3 desktops and 4 laptops, not counting the one I use for work. I have an antenna and power supply for my laptop mounted in my van".


http://www.chuckherrin.com/paperballots.htm

[hunter]

18. Like I said...

I do most of my work on a computer that cost $100 and runs Ubuntu. It makes me happy.

My wife gets irritated if I stay up too late, so I only do it when she's doing the same.

I first logged onto the internet in 1979.

BTW, Doug Jones has an interesting site.

http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/pdp8/

:silly:

[msongs]

7. that's in my town. would love to watch! nt

[Contrite]

8. Has the ES&S system been hacked yet?

We use their optical scans here in Minnesota and I know ES&S optical scans are notoriously bad. I bet our new SOS Mark Ritchie would be open to Harri Hursti having a look.

[BradBlog]

9. Workin' on it ;-) (nt)

[Contrite]

19. Cool! Thanks Brad! n/t

[sutz12]

10. Is this the same guy from the HBO show?

That was interesting, though it didn't get enough air time. Should have been all over the networks. Hell, he hacked a mock election right on screen. It was wild. It think that was a Diebold machine, though.

[BradBlog]

16. Yes, same guy...And yes, that was Diebold (this would be Sequoia)... (nt)

[donsu]

13. kicking for election justice

nt

[Gelliebeans]

15. Great News

I am going to save that video tape of Jeff Stone losing the cocky smile of his when it is proven his precious Sequoia machine is hackable.

I really hope though that we will be able to get a random machine and not one pre-selected by the ROV or the Supervisors.